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Regarding the maintenance of urban green infrastructure, most stakeholders prefer achieving an oversimplified aesthetic archetype of cleanliness and order at the cost of high maintenance, whilst landscape architects try to reproduce islands of near-natural vegetation even where the environmental factors typical of urban areas do not allow it. In the long term, the struggle between these two opposite ways of conceiving the look and the role of green infrastructure appears pointless: in the end, what decides the identity of most urban green infrastructure is the ‘vegetation by use’, that is, the daily people’s use of these spaces (whether accessible). By analysing the aesthetic value, the species composition, and the ecological meaning of the vegetation of some roadside habitats close to the city of Catania (Sicily), the Authors shed light on the possibility of enjoying low-cost, biodiverse and beautiful seasonally green areas. Article info Received: 30/04/2023; Revised: 07/05/2023; ; Accepted: 08/05/2023

Fragmentation, environmental degradation, and habitat loss, due to urbanization and the consequent development of infrastructure, put a great deal of pressure on biological diversity and the functioning of ecosystems. In the coming decades, the ecological footprint of urban areas is set to increase, exacerbating the effect of climate change. In this context, urban development projects represent an excellent opportunity to experiment and implement new solutions which promote biodiversity. This work investigates, on the one hand, how aware designers are of solutions that aim to support biodiversity, and on the other hand, how spatial analysis and the adoption of parametric procedures can optimize cooperation between ecologists and designers from the early design stages.